FREECHIARA CORBELLA PETRILLO: A WITNESS TO JOY EBOOK Simone Troisi,Christian Paccini,Charlotte Fasi | 161 pages | 25 Sep 2015 | Sophia Institute Press | 9781622823055 | English | United States Chiara Corbella: A Witness to Joy This is not the kind of material dreams are made Chiara Corbella Petrillo: A Witness to Joy. Each saint has a special charisma, a particular theme, some facet of God, which he reflects, due to his particular character, call and story. Chiara died on June 13,and her story spread like wildfire. The church was packed at her funeral, which was led by the Vicar General of Rome, Cardinal Agostino Vallini; social media, news agencies, and journals spread the word and soon she was known all over the globe. My copy from January is already the 8th printing, which shows its great popularity. About 1, people attended, with many young couples and children, which is striking Chiara Corbella Petrillo: A Witness to Joy Italy, where people tend to marry late and have few children. She was expecting within a month. Other mothers expecting their first child are beaming, but her face remains serious in the pictures from that time. This was the first announcement of what was to come. It was, she said after having entrusted the baby to the blessed Virgin in the Porziuncola, as if she felt from the beginning that this child was not meant for her, that this child was not hers to keep. This turned out to be true. During a sonogram at 14 weeks, the gynecologist noticed that something was seriously wrong. The baby girl, it turned out, was anencephalic and would die shortly after birth. It was hard for Chiara to hear and digest the news on her own, but even worse to have to be the bearer of such bad tidings to her husband. Yet Chiara Corbella Petrillo: A Witness to Joy seemed like an added hardship at the time Chiara Corbella Petrillo: A Witness to Joy husband was in the hospital for surgery became a superabundant grace. He responded with great love, confirming her faith in him. Their daughter was Chiara Corbella Petrillo: A Witness to Joy blessing, and they would love and accompany her during her brief journey on earth. On the day of the scheduled induction, Chiara went into labor naturally and little Maria Grazia Letizia was born. She died 40 minutes after being born, having received the sacrament of baptism and the last rites, in the arms of her parents on June 10, Her life, as her parents said, was perfect: she had been loved and had returned that love; nothing was lacking. Through her, they truly learnt that loving meant giving, and that its opposite, as St. Francis had taught, was not hatred, but Chiara Corbella Petrillo: A Witness to Joy to possess. Looking back, Enrico and Chiara said that they were capable of this journey because they took one small step at a time; and with each step God gave them sufficient grace to persevere. Chiara felt that she had been prepared for these trials by their difficult courtship. Nothing, she said, neither the death of her children nor her own cancer nor her own death, was as hard for her as this time before their marriage. Chiara and Enrico had met in Medjugorje in ; she was only 18 years old, but knew that Enrico was the man she wanted to marry. Yet they had a hard time together, fighting often, breaking up at times, only to get back together again. Finally, after a break-up, Padre Vito, citing from the Apocalypse, told her that if God opened a door, nobody could close it, but if God closed it, then nobody could open it Apoc. But as Enrico said in Assisi, there was nothing fatalistic about it. God left them the choice all along, they were free and their lives would not have been meaningless, had they not married each other. They met up briefly after what seemed their final break-up; he was ready to say some critical things, when she, for the first time, simply showed herself to him the way she was, without pretending to be better or trying to make things work out at all cost. She could not stop crying, thereby revealing to him how much she Chiara Corbella Petrillo: A Witness to Joy him. Once he did, things started falling into place and they married in September in Assisi, which had become a spiritual home for them. Enrico proposed on a walking pilgrimage there, organized by the Franciscans. Their joy was reminiscent of St. Francis, experiencing the superabundant love of God, which no sorrow could dispel. After the death of Maria Grazia Letizia, they prayed and decided there was no reason to wait. Chiara Corbella Petrillo: A Witness to Joy became pregnant again; things seemed fine at first and everybody thought this child would console them of their previous loss. Then it was discovered that their little boy would be severely handicapped, lacking his lower limbs. They were already looking into different kinds of prostheses, when they found out that he too would not live, since he was lacking some essential organs. Little Davide Giovanni was born on June 24,and lived only 38 minutes; after having been baptized and embraced, he too went to God. His parents left the hospital, Chiara Corbella Petrillo: A Witness to Joy hearts filled with love and divine consolation. The joy they experienced while holding their children in their arms was something they had not imagined, and which would have been denied to them had they aborted. They would not have remembered the day of the abortion with gratitude, but they did commemorate the day their children went to Heaven with thankfulness. Even fewer people came to this second funeral, as Padre Vito said, and they were not the same as had been at the first. Many of their fair-weather friends had abandoned them. When the cross casts its shadow, it drives away the fainthearted. New friends were present, and their number would grow, who would then accompany them on the final journey to Golgotha. There are the Simons of Cyrene and the Veronicas whom God sends along the way to help us carry our crosses and console us. But there are also those who turn away, and those whose counsel weigh down our hearts rather than lighten our burdens. It was due to their sins, some implied, to their lack of faith that Chiara and Enrico had sick children and that Chiara now had cancer. Had they shown sufficient faith, then God would have worked miracles, was their opinion. A conversion Chiara Corbella Petrillo: A Witness to Joy the heart is the greatest miracle on earth, compared to which walking on water is easy. God was with them on this journey, guiding their steps, not punishing them for any real or imagined faults. It was truly supernatural, as Padre Vito emphasized, how God consoled Chiara and Enrico in their trials. To find God in a situation that most people would find unbearable and which would drive them to despair, is a miracle in itself. Chiara and Enrico found that by crying out to God like a child cries out to his father, they were carried along; the cross that would otherwise have crushed them, had become light. The problems of their children were not due to genetic disease; there was no link between these disparate and rare illnesses, and therefore no reason existed for their next child to be sick as well. Shortly thereafter, Chiara became pregnant again. It turned out to be a malignant tumor. Like St. Gianna Beretta Molla, Chiara decided to put her child first and not receive cancer treatments that could harm her preborn son; this was a heroic choice, since the Church recognizes that it is morally licit to seek lifesaving treatments, even if they can cause indirectly the death of the child. What is never morally acceptable is the intentional direct killing of an innocent person; abortion is therefore never permitted. Nor did she want to induce the birth until Francesco had every chance of a healthy life. Francesco was born by induction two weeks early on May 30,and two days after his birth, she was operated on again; this time, it was a true Gethsemane. She suffered greatly and went through a dark night of the soul; God felt absent. Generally, only smokers in their seventies get the kind of cancer she had. It was just as strange a sickness as those of her children; all unrelated, yet coming together to shape a story which would lead to great sanctity. For the time being, Chiara and Enrico were happy to be for once normal parents, having a child to take care of with all the stress and exhaustion this entails. Yet the cancer progressed despite more treatments and tests. On April 4,they Chiara Corbella Petrillo: A Witness to Joy the final verdict: Chiara was terminally ill. It was also a period of great grace. We were shown a long clip from a talk she gave, telling her story. She was wearing an eye-patch her sight in her right eye was affected by the cancerone could see the trace of the surgery on her neck, her laugh was a bit lop-sided as was her mouth when she spoke. Yet one hardly noticed it; she was radiant, beautiful, smiling. Her beauty still distracts me now. She did not put up an act, she was not stoic, not fake; her joy was real.